Chapter 7 - The Plaza

Sayula was a little lake resort; not for the idle rich, for Mexico
has few left; but for tradespeople from Guadalajara, and week-
enders. Even of these, there were few.

Nevertheless, there were two hotels, left over, really, from the
safe quiet days of Don Porfirio, as were most of the villas. The
outlying villas were shut up, some of them abandoned. Those in the
village lived in a perpetual quake of fear. There were many
terrors, but the two regnant were bandits and bolshevists.

Bandits are merely men who, in the outlying villages, having very
often no money, no work, and no prospects, take to robbery and
murder for a time - occasionally for a lifetime - as a profession.
They live in their wild villages until troops are sent after them,
when they retire into the savage mountains, or the marshes.

Bolshevists, somehow, seem to be born on the railway. Wherever the
iron rails run, and passengers are hauled back and forth in railway
coaches, there the spirit of rootlessness, of transitoriness, of
first and second class in separate compartments, of envy and
malice, and of iron and demonish panting engines, seems to bring
forth the logical children of materialism, the bolshevists.

Sayula had her little branch of railway, her one train a day. The
railway did not pay, and fought with extinction. But it was
enough.

Sayula also had that real insanity of America, the automobile. As
men used to want a horse and a sword, now they want a car. As
women used to pine for a home and a box at the theatre, now it is a
'machine.' And the poor follow the middle class. There was a
perpetual rush of 'machines', motor-cars and motor-buses - called
camiónes - along the one forlorn road coming to Sayula from
Guadalajara. One hope, one faith, one destiny; to ride in a
camión, to own a car.

There was a little bandit scare when Kate arrived in the village,
but she did not pay much heed. At evening she went into the plaza,
to be with the people. The plaza was a square with big trees and a
disused bandstand in the centre, a little promenade all round, and
then the cobbled streets where the donkeys and the camiónes passed.
There was a further little section of real market-place, on the
north side.

The band played no more in Sayula, and the elegancia strolled no
more on the inner pavement around the plaza, under the trees. But
the pavement was still good, and the benches were still more-or-
less sound. Oh Don Porfirio's day! And now it was the peons and
Indians, in their blankets and white clothes, who filled the
benches and monopolized the square. True, the law persisted that
the peons must wear trousers in the plaza, and not the loose great
floppy drawers of the fields. But then the peons also WANTED to
wear trousers, instead of the drawers that were the garb of their
humble labour.

The plaza now belonged to the peons. They sat thick on the
benches, or slowly strolled round in their sandals and blankets.
Across the cobbled road on the north side, the little booths
selling soup and hot food were crowded with men after six o'clock;
it was cheaper to eat out, at the end of a day's work. The women
at home could eat tortillas, never mind the caldo, the soup or the
meat mess. At the booths which sold tequila, men, women, and boys
sat on the benches with their elbows on the board. There was a
mild gambling game, where the man in the centre turned the cards,
and the plaza rang to his voice: Cinco de Spadas! Rey de Copas!
A large, stout, imperturbable woman, with a cigarette on her lip
and danger in her lowering black eye, sat on into the night,
selling tequila. The sweetmeat man stood by his board and sold
sweets at one centavo each. And down on the pavement, small tin
torch-lamps flared upon tiny heaps of mangoes or nauseous tropical
red plums, two or three centavos the little heap, while the vendor,
a woman in the full wave of her skirt, or a man with curious
patient humility, squatted waiting for a purchaser, with that
strange fatal indifference and that gentle sort of patience so
puzzling to a stranger. To have thirty cents' worth of little red
plums to sell; to pile them on the pavement in tiny pyramids, five
in a pyramid; and to wait all day and on into the night, squatting
on the pavement and looking up from the feet to the far-off face of
the passer-by and potential purchaser, this, apparently, is an
occupation and a living. At night by the flare of the tin torch,
blowing its flame on the wind.

Usually there would be a couple of smallish young men with guitars
of different sizes, standing close up facing one another like two
fighting cocks that are uttering a long, endless swan-song, singing
in tense subdued voices the eternal ballads, not very musical,
mournful, endless, intense, audible only within close range;
keeping on and on till their throats were scraped. And a few tall,
dark men in red blankets standing around, listening casually, and
rarely, very rarely making a contribution of one centavo.

In among the food-booths would be another trio, this time two
guitars and a fiddle, and two of the musicians blind; the blind
ones singing at a high pitch, full speed, yet not very audible.
The very singing seemed secretive, the singers pressing close in,
face to face, as if to keep the wild, melancholy ballad re-echoing
in their private breasts, their back to the world.

And the whole village was in the plaza, it was like a camp, with
the low, rapid sound of voices. Rarely, very rarely, a voice rose
above the deep murmur of the men, the musical ripple of the women,
the twitter of children. Rarely any quick movement; the slow
promenade of men in sandals, the sandals, called huaraches, making
a slight cockroach shuffle on the pavement. Sometimes, darting
among the trees, barelegged boys went sky-larking in and out of the
shadow, in and out of the quiet people. They were the irrepressible
boot-blacks, who swarm like tiresome flies in a barefooted country.

At the south end of the plaza, just across from the trees and
cornerwise to the hotel, was a struggling attempt at an outdoor
café, with little tables and chairs on the pavement. Here, on
weekdays, the few who dared flaunt their prestige would sit and
drink a beer or a glass of tequila. They were mostly strangers.
And the peons, sitting immobile on the seats in the background,
looked on with basilisk eyes from under the great hats.

But on Saturdays and Sundays there was something of a show. Then
the camiónes and motor-cars came in lurching and hissing. And,
like strange birds alighting, you had slim and charming girls in
organdie frocks and face-powder and bobbed hair, fluttering into
the plaza. There they strolled, arm in arm, brilliant in red
organdie and blue chiffon and white muslin and pink and mauve and
tangerine frail stuffs, their black hair bobbed out, their dark
slim arms interlaced, their dark faces curiously macabre in the
heavy make-up; approximating to white, but the white of a clown or
a corpse.

In a world of big, handsome peon men, these flappers flapped with
butterfly brightness and an incongruous shrillness, manless. The
supply of fifis, the male young elegants who are supposed to equate
the flappers, was small. But still, fifis there were, in white
flannel trousers and white shoes, dark jackets, correct straw hats,
and canes. Fifis far more ladylike than the reckless flappers; and
far more nervous, wincing. But fifis none the less, gallant,
smoking a cigarette with an elegant flourish, talking elegant
Castilian, as near as possible, and looking as if they were going
to be sacrificed to some Mexican god within a twelvemonth; when
they were properly plumped and perfumed. The sacrificial calves
being fattened.

On Saturday, the fifis and the flappers and the motor-car people
from town - only a forlorn few, after all - tried to be butterfly
gay, in sinister Mexico. They hired the musicians with guitars and
fiddle, and the jazz music began to quaver, a little too tenderly,
without enough kick.

And on the pavement under the trees of the alameda - under the trees
of the plaza, just near the little tables and chairs of the café,
the young couples began to gyrate à la mode. The red and the pink
and the yellow and the blue organdie frocks were turning sharply
with all the white flannel trousers available, and some of the
white flannel trousers had smart shoes, white with black strappings
or with tan brogue bands. And some of the organdie frocks had
green legs and green feet, some had legs à la nature, and white
feet. And the slim, dark arms went around the dark blue fifi
shoulders - or dark blue with a white thread. And the immeasurably
soft faces of the males would smile with a self-conscious
fatherliness at the whitened, pretty, reckless little faces of the
females; soft, fatherly, sensuous smiles, suggestive of a victim's
luxuriousness.

But they were dancing on the pavement of the plaza, and on this
pavement the peons were slowly strolling, or standing in groups
watching with black, inscrutable eyes the uncanny butterfly
twitching of the dancers. Who knows what they thought? - whether
they felt any admiration and envy at all, or only just a silent,
cold, dark-faced opposition? Opposition there was.

The young peons in their little white blouses, and the scarlet
serape folded jauntily on one shoulder, strolled slowly on under
their big heavy, poised hats, with a will to ignore the dancers.
Slowly, with a heavy, calm balance, they moved irresistibly through
the dance, as if the dance did not exist. And the fifis in white
trousers, with organdie in their arms, steered as best they might,
to avoid the heavy, relentless passage of the young peons, who went
on talking to one another, smiling and flashing powerful white
teeth, in a black, heavy sang-froid that settled like a blight even
on the music. The dancers and the passing peons never touched,
never jostled. In Mexico you do not run into people accidentally.
But the dance broke against the invisible opposition.

The Indians on the seats, they too watched the dancers for a while.
Then they turned against them the heavy negation of indifference,
like a stone on the spirit. The mysterious faculty of the Indians,
as they sit there, so quiet and dense, for killing off any
ebullient life, for quenching any light and colourful effervescence.

There was indeed a little native dance-hall. But it was shut apart
within four walls. And the whole rhythm and meaning was different,
heavy, with a touch of violence. And even there, the dancers were
artisans and mechanics or railway-porters, the half-urban people.
No peons at all - or practically none.

So, before very long, the organdie butterflies and the flannel-
trouser fifis gave in, succumbed, crushed once more beneath the
stone-heavy passivity of resistance in the demonish peons.

The curious, radical opposition of the Indians to the thing we call
the spirit. It is spirit which makes the flapper flap her organdie
wings like a butterfly. It is spirit which creases the white
flannel trousers of the fifi and makes him cut his rather pathetic
dash. They try to talk the elegancies and flippancies of the
modern spirit.

But down on it all, like a weight of obsidian, comes the passive
negation of the Indian. He understands soul, which is of the
blood. But spirit, which is superior, and is the quality of our
civilization, this, in the mass, he darkly and barbarically
repudiates. Not until he becomes an artisan or connected with
machinery does the modern spirit get him.

And perhaps it is this ponderous repudiation of the modern spirit
which makes Mexico what it is.

But perhaps the automobile will make roads even through the
inaccessible soul of the Indian.

Kate was rather sad, seeing the dance swamped. She had been
sitting at a little table, with Juana for dueña, sipping a glass of
absinthe.

The motor-cars returning to town left early, in a little group. If
bandits were out, they had best keep together. Even the fifis had
a pistol on their hips.

But it was Saturday, so some of the young 'elegance' was staying
on, till the next day; to bathe and flutter in the sun.

It was Saturday, so the plaza was very full, and along the cobbled
streets stretching from the square many torches fluttered and
wavered upon the ground, illuminating a dark salesman and an array
of straw hats, or a heap of straw mats called petates, or pyramids
of oranges from across the lake.

It was Saturday, and Sunday morning was market. So, as it were
suddenly, the life in the plaza was dense and heavy with potency.
The Indians had come in from all the villages, and from far across
the lake. And with them they brought the curious heavy potency of
life which seems to hum deeper and deeper when they collect
together.

In the afternoon, with the wind from the south, the big canoas,
sailing-boats with black hulls and one huge sail, had come drifting
across the waters, bringing the market-produce and the natives to
their gathering ground. All the white specks of villages on the
far shore, and on the far-off slopes, had sent their wild quota to
the throng.

It was Saturday, and the Indian instinct for living on into the
night, once they are gathered together, was now aroused. The
people did not go home. Though market would begin at dawn, men had
no thought of sleep.

At about nine o'clock, after the fifi dance was shattered, Kate
heard a new sound, the sound of a drum, or tom-tom, and saw a drift
of the peons away to the dark side of the plaza, where the side
market would open to-morrow. Already places had been taken, and
little stalls set up, and huge egg-shaped baskets big enough to
hold two men were lolling against the wall.

There was a rippling and a pulse-like thudding of the drum,
strangely arresting on the night air, then the long note of a flute
playing a sort of wild, unemotional melody, with the drum for a
syncopated rhythm. Kate, who had listened to the drums and the
wild singing of the Red Indians in Arizona and New Mexico,
instantly felt that timeless, primeval passion of the prehistoric
races, with their intense and complicated religious significance,
spreading on the air.

She looked inquiringly at Juana, and Juana's black eyes glanced
back at her furtively.

'What is it?' said Kate.

'Musicians, singers,' said Juana evasively.

'But it's DIFFERENT,' said Kate.

'Yes, it is new.'

'New?'

'Yes, it has only been coming for a short time.'

'Where does it come from?'

'Who knows!' said Juana, with an evasive shrug of her shoulders.

'I want to hear,' said Kate.

'It's purely men,' said Juana.

'Still, one can stand a little way off.'

Kate moved towards the dense, silent throng of men in big hats.
They all had their backs to her.

She stood on the step of one of the houses, and saw a little
clearing at the centre of the dense throng of men, under the stone
wall over which bougainvillea and plumbago flowers were hanging,
lit up by the small, brilliantly flaring torches of sweet-smelling
wood, which a boy held in his two hands.

The drum was in the centre of the clearing, the drummer standing
facing the crowd. He was naked from the waist up, wore snow-white
cotton drawers, very full, held round the waist by a red sash, and
bound at the ankles with red cords. Round his uncovered head was a
red cord, with three straight scarlet feathers rising from the back
of his head, and on his forehead a torquoise ornament, a circle of
blue with a round blue stone in the centre. The flute-player was
also naked to the waist, but over his shoulder was folded a fine
white serape with blue-and-dark edges, and fringe. Among the
crowd, men with naked shoulders were giving little leaflets to the
onlookers. And all the time, high and pure, the queer clay flute
was repeating a savage, rather difficult melody, and the drum was
giving the blood-rhythm.

More and more men were drifting in from the plaza. Kate stepped
from her perch and went rather shyly forward. She wanted one of
the papers. The man gave her one without looking at her. And she
went into the light to read. It was a sort of ballad, but without
rhyme, in Spanish. At the top of the leaflet was a rough print of
an eagle within the ring of a serpent that had its tail in its
mouth; a curious deviation from the Mexican emblem, which is an
eagle standing on a nopal, a cactus with great flat leaves, and
holding in its beak and claws a writhing snake.

This eagle stood slim upon the serpent, within the circle of the
snake, that had black markings round its back, like short black
rays pointing inwards. At a little distance, the emblem suggested
an eye.

In the place of the west
In peace, beyond the lashing of the sun's bright tail,
In the stillness where waters are born
Slept I, Quetzalcoatl.

In the cave which is called Dark Eye,
Behind the sun, looking through him as a window
Is the place. There the waters rise,
There the winds are born.

On the waters of the after-life
I rose again, to see a star falling, and feel a breath on my face.
The breath said: Go! And lo!
I am coming.

The star that was falling was fading, was dying.
I heard the star singing like a dying bird;
My name is Jesus, I am Mary's Son.
I am coming home.
My mother the Moon is dark.
Oh brother, Quetzalcoatl
Hold back the dragon of the sun,
Bind him with shadow while I pass
Homewards. Let me come home.

I bound the bright fangs of the Sun
And held him while Jesus passed
Into the lidless shade,
Into the eye of the Father,
Into the womb of refreshment.

And the breath blew upon me again.
So I took the sandals of the Saviour
And started down the long slope
Past the mount of the sun.
Till I saw beneath me
White breast-tips of my Mexico
My bride.

Jesus the Crucified
Sleeps in the healing waters
The long sleep.
Sleep, sleep, my brother, sleep.
My bride between the seas
Is combing her dark hair,
Saying to herself: Quetzalcoatl.

There was a dense throng of men gathered now, and from the centre
the ruddy glow of ocote torches rose warm and strong, and the sweet
scent of the cedar-like resin was on the air. Kate could see
nothing for the mass of men in big hats.

The flute had stopped its piping, and the drum was beating a slow,
regular thud, acting straight on the blood. The incomprehensible
hollow barking of the drum was like a spell on the mind, making the
heart burst each stroke, and darkening the will.

The men in the crowd began to subside, sitting and squatting on the
ground, with their hats between their knees. And now it was a
little sea of dark, proud heads leaning a little forward above the
soft, strong male shoulders.

Near the wall was a clear circle, with the drum in the centre. The
drummer with the naked torso stood tilting his drum towards him,
his shoulders gleaming smooth and ruddy in the flare of light.
Beside him stood another man holding a banner that hung from a
light rod. On the blue field of the banneret was the yellow sun
with a black centre, and between the four greater yellow rays, four
black rays emerging, so that the sun looked like a wheel spinning
with a dazzling motion.

The crowd having all sat down, the six men with naked torsos, who
had been giving out the leaflets and ordering the crowd, now came
back and sat down in a ring, of which the drummer, with the drum
tilted between his knees as he squatted on the ground, was the key.
On his right hand sat the banner-bearer, on his left the flautist.
They were nine men in the ring, the boy, who sat apart watching the
two ocote torches, which he had laid upon a stone supported on a
long cane tripod, being the tenth.

The night seemed to have gone still. The curious seed-rattling hum
of voices that filled the plaza was hushed. Under the trees, on
the pavements, people were still passing unconcerned, but they
looked curiously lonely, isolated figures drifting in the twilight
of the electric lamps, and going about some exceptional business.
They seemed outside the nucleus of life.

Away on the north side, the booths were still flaring, people were
buying and selling. But this quarter, too, looked lonely, and
outside the actual reality, almost like memory.

When the men sat down, the women began to drift up shyly, and seat
themselves on the ground at the outer rim, their full cotton skirts
flowering out around them, and their dark rebozos drawn tight over
their small, round, shy heads, as they squatted on the ground.
Some, too shy to come right up, lingered on the nearest benches of
the plaza. And some had gone away. Indeed, a good many men and
women had disappeared as soon as the drum was heard.

So that the plaza was curiously void. There was the dense clot of
people round the drum, and then the outer world, seeming empty and
hostile. Only in the dark little street that gave on to the
darkness of the lake, people were standing like ghosts, half lit-
up, the men with their serapes over their faces, watching erect and
silent and concealed, from the shadow.

But Kate, standing back in the doorway, with Juana sitting on the
doorstep at her feet, was fascinated by the silent, half-naked ring
of men in the torchlight. Their heads were black, their bodies
soft and ruddy with the peculiar Indian beauty that has at the same
time something terrible in it. The soft, full, handsome torsos of
silent men with heads softly bent a little forward; the soft, easy
shoulders, that are yet so broad, and which balance upon so
powerful a backbone; shoulders drooping a little, with the
relaxation of slumbering, quiescent power; the beautiful ruddy
skin, gleaming with a dark fineness; the strong breasts, so male
and so deep, yet without the muscular hardening that belongs to
white men; and the dark, closed faces, closed upon a darkened
consciousness, the black moustaches and delicate beards framing the
closed silence of the mouth; all this was strangely impressive,
moving strange, frightening emotions in the soul. Those men who
sat there in their dark, physical tenderness, so still and soft,
they looked at the same time frightening. Something dark, heavy,
and reptilian in their silence and their softness. Their very
naked torsos were clothed with a subtle shadow, a certain secret
obscurity. White men sitting there would have been strong-muscled
and frank, with an openness in their very physique, a certain
ostensible presence. But not so these men. Their very nakedness
only revealed the soft, heavy depths of their natural secrecy,
their eternal invisibility. They did not belong to the realm of
that which comes forth.

Everybody was quite still; the expectant hush deepened to a kind of
dead, night silence. The naked-shouldered men sat motionless, sunk
into themselves, and listening with the dark ears of the blood.
The red sash went tight round their waists, the wide white
trousers, starched rather stiff, were bound round the ankles with
red cords, and the dark feet in the glare of the torch looked
almost black, in huaraches that had red thongs. What did they want
then, in life, these men who sat so softly and without any
assertion, yet whose weight was so ponderous, arresting?

Kate was at once attracted and repelled. She was attracted, almost
fascinated by the strange NUCLEAR power of the men in the circle.
It was like a darkly glowing, vivid nucleus of new life. Repellent
the strange heaviness, the sinking of the spirit into the earth,
like dark water. Repellent the silent, dense opposition to the
pale-faced spiritual direction.

Yet here, and here alone, it seemed to her, life burned with a
deep, new fire. The rest of life, as she knew it, seemed wan,
bleached and sterile. The pallid wanness and weariness of her
world! And here, the dark ruddy figures in the glare of a torch,
like the centre of the everlasting fire, surely this was a new
kindling of mankind!

She knew it was so. Yet she preferred to be on the fringe,
sufficiently out of contact. She could not bear to come into
actual contact.

The man with the banner of the sun lifted his face as if he were
going to speak. And yet he did not speak. He was old; in his
sparse beard were grey hairs, grey hairs over his thick, dark
mouth. And his face had the peculiar thickness, with a few deep-
scored lines, of the old among these people. Yet his hair rose
vigorous and manly from his forehead, his body was smooth and
strong. Only, perhaps, a little smoother, heavier, softer than the
shoulders of the younger men.

His black eyes gazed sightless for some time. Perhaps he was
really blind; perhaps it was a heavy abstraction, a sort of heavy
memory working in him, which made his face seem sightless.

Then he began, in a slow, clear, far-off voice, that seemed
strangely to echo the vanished barking of the drum:

'Listen to me, men! Listen to me, women of these men! A long time
ago, the lake started calling for men, in the quiet of the night.
And there were no men. The little charales were swimming round the
shore, looking for something, and the bágari and the other big fish
would jump out of the water, to look around. But there were no
men.

'So one of the gods with hidden faces walked out of the water, and
climbed the hill' - he pointed with his hand in the night towards
the invisible round hill at the back of the village - 'and looked
about. He looked up at the sun, and through the sun he saw the
dark sun, the same that made the sun and the world, and will
swallow it again like a draught of water.

'He said: Is it time? And from behind the bright sun the four
dark arms of the greater sun shot out, and in the shadow men arose.
They could see the four dark arms of the sun in the sky. And they
started walking.

'The man on the top of the hill, who was a god, looked at the
mountains and the flat places, and saw men very thirsty, their
tongues hanging out. So he said to them: Come! Come here! Here
is my sweet water!

'They came like dogs running with their tongues out, and kneeled on
the shore of the lake. And the man on the top of the hill heard
them panting with having drunk much water. He said to them: Have
you drunk too much into yourselves? Are your bones not dry enough?

'The men made houses on the shore, and the man on the hill, who was
a god, taught them to sow maize and beans, and build boats. But he
said to them: No boat will save you, when the dark sun ceases to
hold out his dark arms abroad in the sky.

'The man on the hill said: I am Quetzalcoatl, who breathed
moisture on your dry mouths. I filled your breasts with breath
from beyond the sun. I am the wind that whirls from the heart of
the earth, the little winds that whirl like snakes round your feet
and your legs and your thighs, lifting up the head of the snake of
your body, in whom is your power. When the snake of your body
lifts its head, beware! It is I, Quetzalcoatl, rearing up in you,
rearing up and reaching beyond the bright day, to the sun of
darkness beyond, where is your home at last. Save for the dark sun
at the back of the day-sun, save for the four dark arms in the
heavens, you were bone, and the stars were bone, and the moon an
empty sea-shell on a dry beach, and the yellow sun were an empty
cup, like the dry thin bone of a dead coyote's head. So beware!

'Without me you are nothing. Just as I, without the sun that is
back of the sun, am nothing.

'When the yellow sun is high in the sky, then say: Quetzalcoatl
will lift his hand and screen me from this, else I shall burn out,
and the land will wither.

'For, say I, in the palm of my hand is the water of life, and on
the back of my hand is the shadow of death. And when men forget
me, I lift the back of my hand, farewell! Farewell, and the shadow
of death.

'But men forgot me. Their bones were moist, their hearts weak.
When the snake of their body lifted its head, they said: This is
the tame snake that does as we wish. And when they could not bear
the fire of the sun, they said: The sun is angry. He wants to
drink us up. Let us give him blood of victims.

'And so it was, the dark branches of shade were gone from heaven,
and Quetzalcoatl mourned and grew old, holding his hand before his
face, to hide his face from men.

'He mourned and said: Let me go home. I am old, I am almost bone.
Bone triumphs in me, my heart is a dry gourd. I am weary in
Mexico.

'So he cried to the Master-Sun, the dark one, of the unuttered
name: I am withering white like a perishing gourd-vine. I am
turning to bone. I am denied of these Mexicans. I am waste and
weary and old. Take me away.

'Then the dark sun reached an arm, and lifted Quetzalcoatl into the
sky. And the dark sun beckoned with a finger, and brought white
men out of the east. And they came with a dead god on the Cross,
saying: Lo! This is the Son of God! He is dead, he is bone! Lo,
your god is bled and dead, he is bone. Kneel and sorrow for him,
and weep. For your tears he will give you comfort again, from the
dead, and a place among the scentless rose-trees of the after-life,
when you are dead.

'Lo! His mother weeps, and the waters of the world are in her
hands. She will give you drink, and heal you, and lead you to the
land of God. In the land of God you shall weep no more. Beyond
the gates of death, when you have passed from the house of bone
into the garden of white roses.

'So the weeping Mother brought her Son who was dead on the Cross to
Mexico, to live in the temples. And the people looked up no more,
saying: The Mother weeps. The Son of her womb is bone. Let us
hope for the place of the west, where the dead have peace among the
scentless rose-trees, in the Paradise of God.

'For the priests would say: It is beautiful beyond the grave.

'And then the priests grew old, and the tears of the Mother were
exhausted, and the Son on the Cross cried out to the dark sun far
beyond the sun: What is this that is done to me? Am I dead for
ever, and only dead? Am I always and only dead, but bone on a
Cross of bone?

'So this cry was heard in the world, and beyond the stars of the
night, and beyond the sun of the day.

'Jesus said again: Is it time? My Mother is old like a sinking
moon, the old bone of her can weep no more. Are we perished beyond
redeem?

'Then the greatest of the great suns spoke aloud from the back of
the sun: I will take my Son to my bosom, I will take His Mother on
my lap. Like a woman I will put them in my womb, like a mother I
will lay them to sleep, in mercy I will dip them in the bath of
forgetting and peace and renewal.

'That is all. So hear now, you men, and you women of these men.

'Jesus is going home, to the Father, and Mary is going back, to
sleep in the belly of the Father. And they both will recover from
death, during the long long sleep.

'But the Father will not leave us alone. We are not abandoned.

'The Father has looked around, and has seen the Morning Star,
fearless between the rush of the oncoming yellow sun, and the
backward reel of the night. So the Great One, whose name has never
been spoken, says: Who art thou, bright watchman? And the dawn-
star answering: It is I, the Morning Star, who in Mexico was
Quetzalcoatl. It is I, who look at the yellow sun from behind,
have my eye on the unseen side of the moon. It is I, the star,
midway between the darkness and the rolling of the sun. I, called
Quetzalcoatl, waiting in the strength of my days.

''The Father answered: It is well. It is well. And again: It is
time.

'Thus the big word was spoken behind the back of the world. The
Nameless said: It is time.

'Once more the word has been spoken: It is time.

'Listen, men, and the women of men: It is time. Know now it is
time. Those that left us are coming back. Those that came are
leaving again. Say welcome, and then farewell!

'Welcome! Farewell!'

The old man ended with a strong, suppressed cry, as if really
calling to the gods:

'Bienvenido! Bienvenido! Adiós! Adiós!'

Even Juana, seated at Kate's feet, cried out without knowing what
she did:

'Bienvenido! Bienvenido! Adiós! Adiós! Adiós-n!'

On the last adiós! she trailed out to a natural human 'n.'

The drum began to beat with an insistent, intensive rhythm, and the
flute, or whistle, lifted its odd, far-off calling voice. It was
playing again and again the peculiar melody Kate had heard at
first.

Then one of the men in the circle lifted his voice, and began to
sing the hymn. He sang in the fashion of the old Red Indians, with
intensity and restraint, singing inwardly, singing to his own soul,
not outward to the world, nor yet even upward to God, as the
Christians sing. But with a sort of suppressed, tranced intensity,
singing to the inner mystery, singing not into space, but into the
other dimension of man's existence, where he finds himself in the
infinite room that lies inside the axis of our wheeling space.
Space, like the world, cannot but move. And like the world, there
is an axis. And the axis of our worldly space, when you enter, is
a vastness where even the trees come and go, and the soul is at
home in its own dream, noble and unquestioned.

The strange, inward pulse of the drum, and the singer singing
inwardly, swirled the soul back into the very centre of time, which
is older than age. He began on a high, remote note, and holding
the voice at a distance, ran on in subtle, running rhythms,
apparently unmeasured, yet pulsed underneath by the drum, and
giving throbbing, three-fold lilts and lurches. For a long time,
no melody at all was recognizable: it was just a lurching, running,
far-off crying, something like the distant faint howling of a
coyote. It was really the music of the old American Indian.

There was no recognizable rhythm, no recognizable emotion, it was
hardly music. Rather a far-off, perfect crying in the night. But
it went straight through to the soul, the most ancient and
everlasting soul of all men, where alone can the human family
assemble in immediate contact.

Kate knew it at once, like a sort of fate. It was no good
resisting. There was neither urge nor effort, nor any speciality.
The sound sounded in the innermost far-off place of the human core,
the ever-present, where there is neither hope nor emotion, but
passion sits with folded wings on the nest, and faith is a tree of
shadow.

Like fate, like doom. Faith is the Tree of Life itself,
inevitable, and the apples are upon us, like the apples of the eye,
the apples of the chin, the apple of the heart, the apples of the
breast, the apple of the belly, with its deep core, the apples of
the loins, the apples of the knees, the little, side-by-side apples
of the toes. What do change and evolution matter? We are the Tree
with the fruit forever upon it. And we are faith forever. Verbum
sat.

The one singer had finished, and only the drum kept on, touching
the sensitive membrane of the night subtly and knowingly. Then a
voice in the circle rose again on the song, and like birds flying
from a tree, one after the other, the individual voices arose, till
there was a strong, intense, curiously weighty soaring and sweeping
of male voices, like a dark flock of birds flying and dipping in
unison. And all the dark birds seemed to have launched out of the
heart, in the inner forest of the masculine chest.

And one by one, voices in the crowd broke free, like birds
launching and coming in from a distance, caught by the spell. The
words did not matter. Any verse, any words, no words, the song
remained the same: a strong, deep wind rushing from the caverns of
the breast, from the everlasting soul! Kate herself was too shy
and wincing to sing: too blenched with disillusion. But she heard
the answer away back in her soul, like a far-off mocking-bird at
night. And Juana was singing in spite of herself, in a crooning
feminine voice, making up the words unconsciously.

The half-naked men began to reach for their serapes: white serapes,
with borders of blue and earth-brown bars, and dark fringe. A man
rose from the crowd and went towards the lake. He came back with
ocote and with faggots that a boat had brought over. And he
started a little fire. After a while, another man went for fuel,
and started another fire in the centre of the circle, in front of
the drum. Then one of the women went off soft and bare-foot, in
her full cotton skirt. And she made a little bonfire among the
women.

The air was bronze with the glow of flame, and sweet with smoke
like incense. The song rose and fell, then died away. Rose, and
died. The drum ebbed on, faintly touching the dark membrane of the
night. Then ebbed away. In the absolute silence could be heard
the soundless stillness of the dark lake.

Then the drum started again, with a new, strong pulse. One of the
seated men, in his white poncho with the dark blackish-and-blue
border, got up, taking off his sandals as he did so, and began
softly to dance the dance step. Mindless, dancing heavily and with
a curious bird-like sensitiveness of the feet, he began to tread
the earth with his bare soles, as if treading himself deep into the
earth. Alone, with a curious pendulum rhythm, leaning a little
forward from a powerful backbone, he trod to the drum beat, his
white knees lifting and lifting alternately against the dark fringe
of his blanket, with a queer dark splash. And another man put his
huaraches into the centre of the ring, near the fire, and stood up
to dance. The man at the drum lifted up his voice in a wild, blind
song. The men were taking off their ponchos. And soon, with the
firelight on their breasts and on their darkly abstracted faces,
they were all afoot, with bare torsos and bare feet, dancing the
savage bird-tread.

'Who sleeps shall wake! Who sleeps shall wake! Who treads down
the path of the snake in the dust shall arrive at the place; in the
path of the dust shall arrive at the place and be dressed in the
skin of the snake: shall be dressed in the skin of the snake of the
earth, that is father of stone; that is father of stone and the
timber of earth; of the silver and gold, of the iron, the timber of
earth from the bone of the father of earth, of the snake of the
world, of the heart of the world, that beats as a snake beats the
dust in its motion on earth, from the heart of the world.

'Who slee-eeps sha-all wake! Who slee-eeps sha-all wake! Who
sleeps sha-ll wake in the way of the snake of the dust of the
earth, of the stone of the earth, of the bone of the earth.'

The song seemed to take new wild flights, after it had sunk and
rustled to a last ebb. It was like waves that rise out of the
invisible, and rear up into form and a flying, disappearing
whiteness and a rustle of extinction. And the dancers, after
dancing in a circle in a slow, deep absorption, each man changeless
in his own place, treading the same dust with the soft churning of
bare feet, slowly, slowly began to revolve, till the circle was
slowly revolving round the fire, with always the same soft, down-
sinking, churning tread. And the drum kept the changeless living
beat, like a heart, and the song rose and soared and fell, ebbed
and ebbed to a sort of extinction, then heaved up again.

Till the young peons could stand it no more. They put off their
sandals and their hats and their blankets, and shyly, with inexpert
feet that yet knew the old echo of the tread, they stood behind the
wheeling dancers, and danced without changing place. Till soon the
revolving circle had a fixed yet throbbing circle of men outside.

Then suddenly one of the naked-shouldered dancers from the inner
circle stepped back into the outer circle and with a slow leaning,
slowly started the outer circle revolving in the reverse direction
from the inner. So now there were two wheels of the dance, one
within the other, and revolving in different directions.

They kept on and on, with the drum and the song, revolving like
wheels of shadow-shapes around the fire. Till the fire died low,
and the drum suddenly stopped, and the men suddenly dispersed,
returning to their seats again.

There was silence, then the low hum of voices and the sound of
laughter. Kate had thought, so often, that the laughter of the
peons broke from them in a sound almost like pain. But now the
laughs came like little invisible flames, suddenly from the embers
of the talk.

Everybody was waiting, waiting. Yet nobody moved at once, when the
thud of the drum struck again like a summons. They sat still
talking, listening with a second consciousness. Then a man arose
and threw off his blanket, and threw wood on the central fire.
Then he walked through the seated men to where the women clustered
in the fullness of their skirts. There he waited, smiling with a
look of abstraction. Till a girl rose and came with utmost shyness
towards him, holding her rebozo tight over her lowered head with
her right hand, and taking the hand of the man in her left. It was
she who lifted the motionless hand of the man in her own, shyly,
with a sudden shy snatching. He laughed, and led her through the
now risen men, towards the inner fire. She went with dropped head,
hiding her face in confusion. But side by side and loosely holding
hands, they began to tread the soft, heavy dance-step, forming the
first small segment of the inner, stationary circle.

And now all the men were standing facing outwards, waiting to be
chosen. And the women quickly, their shawled heads hidden, were
slipping in and picking up the loose right hand of the man of their
choice. The inner men with the naked shoulders were soon chosen.
The inner circle, of men and women in pairs, hand in hand, was
closing.

'Come, Niña, come!' said Juana, looking up at Kate with black,
gleaming eyes.

'I am afraid!' said Kate. And she spoke the truth.

One of the bare-breasted men had come across the street, out of the
crowd, and was standing waiting, near the doorway in which Kate
stood, silently, with averted face.

'Look! Niña! This master is waiting for you. Then come! Oh,
Niña, come!'

The voice of the criada had sunk to the low, crooning, almost
magical appeal of the women of the people, and her black eyes
glistened strangely, watching Kate's face. Kate, almost
mesmerized, took slow, reluctant steps forward, towards the man who
was standing with averted face.

'Do you mind?' she said in English, in great confusion. And she
touched his fingers with her own.

His hand, warm and dark and savagely suave, loosely, almost with
indifference, and yet with the soft barbaric nearness, held her
fingers, and he led her to the circle. She dropped her head, and
longed to be able to veil her face. In her white dress and green
straw hat, she felt a virgin again, a young virgin. This was the
quality these men had been able to give back to her.

Shyly, awkwardly, she tried to tread the dance-step. But in her
shoes she felt inflexible, insulated, and the rhythm was not in
her. She moved in confusion.

But the man beside her held her hand in the same light, soft grasp,
and the slow, pulsing pendulum of his body swayed untrammelled. He
took no notice of her. And yet he held her fingers in his soft,
light touch.

Juana had discarded her boots and stockings, and with her dark,
creased face like a mask of obsidian, her eyes gleaming with the
timeless female flame, dark and unquenchable, she was treading the
step of the dance.

'As the bird of the sun treads the earth at the dawn of the day
like a brown hen under his feet, like a hen and the branches of her
belly droop with the apples of birth, with the eggs of gold, with
the eggs that hide the globe of the sun in the waters of heaven, in
the purse of the shell of earth that is white from the fire of the
blood, tread the earth, and the earth will conceive like the hen
'neath the feet of the bird of the sun; 'neath the feet of the
heart, 'neath the heart's twin feet. Tread the earth, tread the
earth that squats as a pullet with wings closed in - '

The circle began to shift, and Kate was slowly moving round between
two silent and absorbed men, whose arms touched her arms. And the
one held her fingers softly, loosely, but with transcendent
nearness. And the wild song rose again like a bird that has
alighted for a second, and the drum changed rhythm incomprehensibly.

The outer wheel was all men. She seemed to feel the strange dark
glow of them upon her back. Men, dark, collective men, non-
individual. And herself woman, wheeling upon the great wheel of
womanhood.

Men and women alike danced with faces lowered and expressionless,
abstract, gone in the deep absorption of men into the greater
manhood, women into the great womanhood. It was sex, but the
greater, not the lesser sex. The waters over the earth wheeling
upon the waters under the earth, like an eagle silently wheeling
above its own shadow.

She felt her sex and her womanhood caught up and identified in the
slowly revolving ocean of nascent life, the dark sky of the men
lowering and wheeling above. She was not herself, she was gone,
and her own desires were gone in the ocean of the great desire. As
the man whose fingers touched hers was gone in the ocean that is
male, stooping over the face of the waters.

The slow, vast, soft-touching revolution of the ocean above upon
ocean below, with no vestige of rustling or foam. Only the pure
sliding conjunction. Herself gone into her greater self, her
womanhood consummated in the greater womanhood. And where her
fingers touched the fingers of the man, the quiet spark, like the
dawn-star, shining between her and the greater manhood of men.

How strange, to be merged in desire beyond desire, to be gone in
the body beyond the individualism of the body, with the spark of
contact lingering like a morning star between her and the man, her
woman's greater self, and the greater self of man. Even of the two
men next to her. What a beautiful slow wheel of dance, two great
streams streaming in contact, in opposite directions.

She did not know the face of the man whose fingers she held. Her
personal eyes had gone blind, his face was the face of dark heaven,
only the touch of his fingers a star that was both hers and his.

Her feet were feeling the way into the dance-step. She was
beginning to learn softly to loosen her weight, to loosen the
uplift of all her life, and let it pour slowly, darkly, with an
ebbing gush, rhythmical in soft, rhythmic gushes from her feet into
the dark body of the earth. Erect, strong like a staff of life,
yet to loosen all the sap of her strength and let it flow down into
the roots of the earth.

She had lost count of time. But the dance of itself seemed to be
wheeling to a close, though the rhythm remained exactly the same to
the end.

The voice finished singing, only the drum kept on. Suddenly the
drum gave a rapid little shudder, and there was silence. And
immediately the hands were loosened, the dance broke up into
fragments. The man gave her a quick, far-off smile and was gone.
She would never know him by sight. But by presence she might know
him.

The women slipped apart, clutching their rebozos tight round their
shoulders. The men hid themselves in their blankets. And Kate
turned to the darkness of the lake.

'Already you are going, Niña?' came Juana's voice of mild, aloof
disappointment.

'I must go now,' said Kate hurriedly.

And she hastened towards the dark of the lake, Juana running behind
her with shoes and stockings in her hand.

Kate wanted to hurry home with her new secret, the strange secret
of her greater womanhood, that she could not get used to. She
would have to sink into this mystery.

She hastened along the uneven path of the edge of the lake shore,
that lay dark in shadow, though the stars gave enough light to show
the dark bulks and masts of the sailing-canoes against the downy
obscurity of the water. Night, timeless, hourless night! She
would not look at her watch. She would lay her watch face down, to
hide its phosphorus figures. She would not be timed.

And as she sank into sleep, she could hear the drum again, like a
pulse inside a stone beating.